Our weekly round-up of must-read stories you might have missed. In focus this week: An interview with Matt Simmonds, the liaison officer for the platform of civil society organisations that sits in the OECD Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, BetterAid in Paris; Connecting Kids to Real Food by Kathleen Yetman, for Slow Food; Human rights festival examines political future of Iraq.
Decent work and social protection should be included in the Post-2015 Agenda – Arpil 8, 2013
To what extent has the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) framework influenced the international community towards improving liveable and workable conditions for workers in marginalised areas of the world? The MDGs, as originally developed in 2000, very much overlooked the employment dimension when trying to address poverty under MDG 1. No surprises then that, also overlooked, were conditions of employment and the challenges workers face the world over especially in those parts of the world where they are most marginalised. So it is safe to say that at least from the very outset, the MDG framework would not have had much influence on the international community in addressing the challenges faced by workers. However, at the point when the MDG review process began, it was clear that issues around employment and decent work needed to be addressed head on if progress was to be made against MDG 1…
Connecting Kids to Real Food – April 10, 2013
Cibecue, Arizona is a community of 1700 White Mountain Apache tribal members situated among stunning red rock hills, scrub juniper, and sprawling grasslands. It is located on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in eastern Arizona at the foot of the White Mountains. Cibecue is off the beaten path—an hour’s drive from any other town or city—and due to its isolation, food options are limited. There are three convenience stores in Cibecue. Last year, while serving as a FoodCorps service member, a network of leaders connecting kids to real food, I perused the shelves of the largest of the three. There was one cooler in the back of the store sparsely stocked with packaged cucumbers and half-ripe tomatoes, and a couple of heads of iceberg lettuce. These are the only vegetables for sale in the community. In one of the other stores, with a growling stomach, I searched for the healthiest item, and after settling on a 16-ounce (450g) block of cheddar cheese, discovered that it cost $7.00. In that same store, one can buy 308 ounces of soda (9 liters) for the same price…
Human rights festival examines political future of Iraq – April 10, 2013
The political future of Iraq has been the subject of impassioned debate at this year’s Kingston University Human Rights Festival. The festival, which got under way in March and coincides with the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, opened with an event focusing on the United States’ military detention system in the early years of the war in the Middle Eastern nation. The session also explored questions about the legality of the invasion itself and considered what lay in store for the country in years to come. Human rights PhD student Peter Finn, who has helped organise the festival, said it was important to understand what happened in Iraq from a human rights’ perspective. “There are still so many questions today about whether the invasion was legal and whether or not the British public was told the truth by politicians in connection with what went on,” Mr Finn said. “The festival has given us the chance to examine those issues in detail and look at the current state of Iraqi politics and how they might evolve in the future.”…
