Issues Page

Insufficient food production is one factor in the food crisis hitting much of the developing world - yet it is also true that some African farmers see 70 percent of their production lost before it reaches the market. And irrigation will be part of the answer to feeding hungry populations - even though in much of Africa 90 percent of freshwater already goes to agriculture. Solving such conundrums will be the key to meeting the world's food needs, says Henrietta Fore, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, or USAID. The world faces a food security crisis that this year spawned riots in parts of the developing world, and is expected to challenge the world's poor with high prices for at least the next half-decade, she says.

The Catholic Church in Latin America is changing its approach to the continuing epidemic of HIV and AIDS, and many are welcoming the changes. "While moral double standards and stigma remain strong elements of the response to HIV and AIDS in many evangelical and Protestant churches, I've recently seen an enthusiastic willingness to deal openly with the epidemic from Catholic leaders," said Dr. Eduardo Campana, an Ecuadorean who heads an AIDS program for the Latin American Council of Methodist Churches. The bishops urged people to work together to fight discrimination against those with AIDS and to avoid judging them.

Some 27 million people labor as slaves - more than ever before - but those on the front lines of the antislavery movement see signs that human bondage is becoming increasingly unacceptable to the public and to a growing number of governments and businesses. Often, the fight against slavery begins quietly and unheralded, in countries where people risk their lives to free other human beings. The grass-roots, shoestring organizations that take the lead are beginning to win allies in government and industry. Brazil, for example, has a national plan that could be a model for other nations. The chocolate industry, for another, has become the first industry in history to invest resources to eliminate child and forced labor throughout its supply chain.

Nearly 600 immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally were detained, creating panic among dozens of families in this small southern Mississippi town. The superintendent of the county school district said about half of approximately 160 Hispanic students were absent Tuesday. One worker caught in Monday's sweep at the plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago. Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman.

Catholic leaders at an international mission conference for the Americas said the church must become a missionary community with a new mentality. The Third American Missionary Congress drew more than 2,000 laypeople, bishops, priests and religious to Quito, Ecuador, Aug. 12-17 to discuss challenges for mission, from family life and fundamentalism to ecology and science. The closing Mass marked the official launch of the "great continental mission" that bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean announced in May 2007 during their fifth general conference in Aparecida, Brazil. That mission must build on "a spirit that was begun in Aparecida, the spirit of mission, of discipleship," said Auxiliary Bishop Octavio Cisneros of Brooklyn, N.Y.

The black church - traditionally a loud voice for social change - has been curiously silent on the crisis of AIDS in the African-American community, and some say, even negligent. Despite the fact that pastors across the south have offered small consolation to people infected with the virus, AIDS activists say they need black churches the help stem the growing tide of new HIV and AIDS cases. While African-Americans represent 19 percent of the south's population, Pinkston reports they're 56 percent of new AIDS cases in the region. It is an issue that the people of God must address, said Reverend Claude R. Alexander, Jr., of the University Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C.

Massachusetts investment banker and philanthropist Robert Hildreth's success in business means Luis Delgado, a Mexican immigrant arrested in an immigration crackdown on a Maryland roofing company June 30, will get to be with his wife and children for the months it will take his legal case to be adjudicated. Hildreth's offer to help pay a few immigrants' bonds after a raid in 2001 has now led to the creation of a national fund to help other people facing detention far from their homes and families. His concern for families separated after a major immigration raid in New Bedford, Mass., last year led Hildreth to start writing checks so some of those factory workers wouldn't have to wait in detention centers thousands of miles away while their cases were heard.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) on Tuesday announced a $214-million roll-out directed at 14 global "hunger hotspots". The measure comes as nearly one billion poor people worldwide grapple with the "unrelenting global high food and fuel price crisis", the Rome-based WFP said in a statement. The $214 million will help provide food rations to highly vulnerable groups; continuing to feed school-aged children even while school is out and giving supplemental food to pregnant women and young children whose mental and physical development is at stake, WFP said. In addition, the money expands food assistance to urban areas hardest hit by high food prices, including through vouchers and support for small farmers and markets in countries where WFP will purchase food assistance locally.

Faith-based organizations, which for years have been relegated to the margins of discussions on AIDS policy and planning, are finally beginning to gain recognition, said participants in the XVII International AIDS Conference, which concluded Aug. 8 in Mexico City. During a speech to a gathering of 600 religious leaders that preceded the conference, Craig McClure, executive director of the International AIDS Society, applauded the churches' response to HIV and AIDS. The Geneva-based International AIDS Society, the main sponsor of the international AIDS conference, is the world's leading independent association of HIV and AIDS professionals.

How do you eliminate slavery and human trafficking? Modern abolitionists across the globe are tackling that question head on - and collaborating via the Internet on their efforts. Through Changemakers.net, many have joined in a global competition to identify the most innovative antislavery programs and extend their impact. An initiative of Ashoka, a global association of social entrepreneurs, Changemakers has run 20 competitions online to promote innovative solutions in areas such as water and sanitation, geotourism, ending corruption, and sports for a better world. All applications in a competition go up on the Web, where others can comment, learn from, and help refine the ideas and programs.

Pope Benedict XVI appealed for an immediate end to military operations in Georgia and its breakaway province of South Ossetia. Citing reports of heavy civilian casualties and a large number of refugees, the pope called on the international community to act quickly to bring Russian and Georgian leaders to the bargaining table. "It is my fervent wish that military actions cease immediately," the pope said Aug. 10. He urged both sides to "refrain, also in the name of a common Christian heritage, from further confrontations and violent retaliations that could degenerate into a wider conflict."

As national authorities step up immigration enforcement through workplace raids, advocates for immigrants are raising bond money to prevent people from routinely being detained while awaiting trial. Advocates are conducting a fundraising campaign so that suspected illegal immigrants will be able to post bond after being arrested during raids. "This is one tool to help them have access to justice," said Liz Alex, senior manager in Baltimore for CASA de Maryland, a statewide immigrant advocacy group. The national fundraising campaign will be launched at a news conference today in Silver Spring, where CASA is headquartered.

Early in the 1990s, AIDS appeared to be ravaging Haiti in the same way the virus was devastating sub-Saharan Africa; almost 10 percent of the adults of the impoverished Caribbean island were HIV-positive, and the number was increasing every year. However, this year the number decreased to 3.8 percent. The reason for the success, said Dr. Dianne Jean-Francois, director of the Haitian office of the New York-based Catholic Medical Mission Board, is that church groups, secular charities and governments have all worked together to combat the effects of the virus.

Fresh off a whirlwind tour of AIDS programs across Africa, former president Bill Clinton said Monday that new U.S. figures highlight the need for fresh attention to the disease at home, particularly among African Americans. Citing data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicating that the U.S. epidemic has been underestimated by 40 percent, Clinton pledged the resources of his charitable foundation to refocus on domestic AIDS. Until now, the William J. Clinton Foundation's HIV/AIDS Initiative has focused overseas, primarily in Africa and the Caribbean. The foundation is credited with helping negotiate drastically lower prices for anti-retroviral therapies and diagnostic tests in places such as Senegal, Tanzania, Rwanda and Haiti. Clinton suggested he will now also target domestic AIDS, though he did not provide specifics.

They call it the green hunger. Four-foot cornstalks sprout from rain-soaked earth, and wind billows fields of teff, the staple Ethiopian grain. Goats and cattle are getting fat on lush grasses -- but the children are still dying. Once again, images of emaciated children are emerging from this Horn of Africa nation, rekindling memories of the 1984 famine that killed nearly 1 million people. This time Ethiopia has been grappling with a double whammy: drought in its traditional breadbasket and a global food crisis that has pushed prices sky high. Although recent rains and an influx of humanitarian aid have experts cautiously predicting the crisis might be stabilizing in parts of the country, nearly 10 million people will need emergency aid to survive until the harvest in September.

Bread for the World president David Beckmann today warned that the recent collapse of global trade negotiations, called the Doha Round, will adversely affect the world's hungry and poor people in more ways than the negotiators realize. Even before the current hunger crisis, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 862 million people go to bed hungry. Today, the World Bank estimates that rising food prices are putting an additional 100 million people at risk of falling deeper into poverty. The Doha Round reached an impasse after the United States, China, and India were unable to agree on when developing countries can impose emergency tariffs on products like sugar, cotton, and rice in case of a sudden rise in imports.

Gen. Omar al-Bashir overthrew the government of Sudan in 1989. Since his militias attacked in Darfur, Sudanese in numbers equal to the population of Pittsburgh have been killed, and Nevada-sized numbers have fled their homes. Mr. Bashir has traded Sudan's oil to China for billions in arms and cash, and is eyeing the oil fields of south Sudan. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has demanded that Bashir be arrested for crimes against humanity. The US government has responded to Bashir's gross violations of human rights by declaring a genocide in Darfur and tightening economic sanctions. These efforts are admirable, but we need to stop Bashir's power at its source: stolen oil. The oil that Bashir sends to China is not his to sell. America should act to safeguard Sudan's oil for its rightful owners: the people of Sudan.

The planned execution this week of a man convicted in one of Houston's most brutal murder cases in a generation has become among the most contentious in the state that has the nation's busiest capital punishment system. International attention has been focused on the execution of convicted killer Jose Medellin scheduled for Tuesday. The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, said the Mexican-born Medellin and some 50 other Mexicans on death row around the nation should have new hearings in U.S. courts to determine whether a 1963 treaty was violated during their arrests. Medellin, now 33, is the first among the 50 who is set to die.

The harsh prosecution of migrant workers at Postville is an odd and cruel shift for the Bush administration, which for years had voiced compassion for exploited workers and insisted that immigration had to be fixed comprehensively or not at all. Now it has abandoned mercy and proportionality. It has devised new and harsher traps, as in Postville, to prosecute the weak and the poor. Instead of receiving merciful treatment as defendants who also are victims, the workers have been branded as the kind of predator who steals identities to empty bank accounts. Accounts from Postville suggest that that's not remotely what they were.