Human Rights Issue 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.