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HAVE YOUR SAY: Should the world help even if Myanmar doesn't want it?
08 May 2008 13:57:00 GMT
Author: AlertNet

France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, says the United Nations should deliver aid to cyclone-devastated Myanmar even if the military junta doesn't approve it. He argues the United Nations has a responsibility to protect people and it should be able to intervene even if that means violating national sovereignty.

But John Holmes, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, says confrontation would undermine discussions with Myanmar's government, and the European Commission has dismissed the idea.

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What do we do about climate change migrants?
02 May 2008 13:01:00 GMT
Author: Emma Batha

If you are forced to flee abroad because of war you will be recognised as a refugee under international law. But what happens if you're forced to move because your village disappears under rising sea levels caused by global warming?

Does the world have a duty to help? Should there be an onus on countries with the largest carbon footprints to take in the people rendered homeless by climate change?

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Climate change, a TV experiment and pesky mozzies
30 Apr 2008 16:08:00 GMT
Author: Emma Batha

If you feel that climate change is just too daunting a problem for one person to do anything about, then here's a story from Bangkok to make you think again ...

Oxford University professor Norman Myers describes how he was watching television in a hotel in the Thai capital when the presenter announced that he wanted viewers to join in an experiment.

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Burma: Humanitarianism on the rocks?
24 Apr 2008 11:45:00 GMT
Author: Joel Charny

Burma is a place of widespread misery. The indicators are alarming: one in 10 children don't see their fifth birthday, the highest rate outside Africa except for Afghanistan; malaria, a preventable disease, is the country's biggest killer; HIV rates are the highest in Southeast Asia.

Poverty, political persecution and human rights abuses have forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. There are an estimated 2 million Burmese in Thailand alone. Thousands of others cross the western border into Bangladesh and India. Although some find their way into refugee camps, the majority live an underground existence due to policies in all these countries aimed at discouraging asylum seekers.

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School bells ring for Colombia's war-displaced
23 Apr 2008 11:35:00 GMT
Author: Anastasia Moloney

At lunchtime inside the sparse cafeteria at Maria Auxiliadora School, pupils tuck into a small plate of rice, beans and chicken. For most of these children, all who have been displaced by Colombia's violence, this is their only main meal of the day.

The private school run by nuns in Soacha, a municipality on the outskirts of southeast Bogota, admits around 160 displaced children every year. The surrounding sprawling hilltop slums have become a magnet for some 3,000 displaced families escaping armed conflict that pits guerrilla groups against government armed forces and rightwing paramilitaries.

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HAVE YOUR SAY: Should the world help even if Myanmar doesn't want it?

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MAP: Flooding in Yangon, Burma (Myanmar) (satellite image)