Babalou arrives from Paris to Addis

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Remembering my encounter with Kifle Selassie, I am hearing whispering waters from an ancient African well. It’s full of a history and cultural wisdom from deep in the Earth. Its waters are those which the African Diaspora is urgently and, too often unconsciously, hungry for and of which the larger Western world is oblivious, contemptuous or covetous. It’s a water whose element connects all the human species… another kind of “Holy Water” sometimes full of fire, ultimately healing… come to the river. The best of who we are is often manifested in those waters. That is where our souls touch in that blinding universal force and we kiss the sky and water all at once, full moon and countless constellations shimmering, swirling and turning. Come to the river people. Continue Reading

Rights to water and sanitation now legally binding

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On November 21, the U.N. General Assembly’s Third Committee (The Committee) adopted a resolution on “The human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.” All U.N. member states agreed that the rights to water and sanitation are derived from the right to an adequate standard of living. As a result, these rights are now implicitly recognized as being part of International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Continue Reading

Draft deal lays groundwork for future negotiations on exempting food security programs from WTO disputes

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The WTO’s “Bali Package” was supposed to have been adopted this early morning of December 7 after trade diplomats rolled in for a final meeting at midnight. Earlier in the evening, at 8:00 p.m. on December 6, the WTO secretariat had shared a set of decisions proposed by the chair that comprise the Bali Package. The meeting was originally scheduled to close by 5:00 p.m.. However, at the time of this writing, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua have said to have blocked consensus and the meeting has been adjourned. Cuba’s major issue has been language in the Trade Facilitation decision on “freedom of transit” that fails to address the problems it faces with the U.S. embargo against Cuba. The meeting has been adjourned to reconvene sometime in the next hours. Continue Reading

COMMUNITY VOICES | A Guatemalan, A Minnesotan and Our U.S. Tourist Visa Experience

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I am originally from Minneapolis, but have been living and working for a non-profit called Somos Hermanos in Guatemala for the past five years . This is the story of how my Guatemalan partner and I decided to apply for a tourist visa so he could travel to Minnesota and meet my family. Originally, this was an e-mail sent to all of our loved ones.About a month ago Carlos surprised me and let me know that he intended on applying for a visa so he could join me on my visit to Minneapolis in a few weeks. I wanted to share our personal visa process with you because not only was it important to us personally, but also to show a perspective that is rarely available in regards getting legal permission to visit the country we live in.We spent about 3 weeks gathering paper work in Quetzalteango, Guatemala so that we could fill out the online tourist visa application. This meant long lines at super slow and bureaucratic government offices, long lines at the bank, and lots of brainstorming of which documents would help Carlos’ case. Continue Reading

The global assault on democracy

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A country polarized and in paralysis by its political parties. A country that spies on its citizens and where its representatives no longer seem connected or accountable to their people. A country where the standard of living of its people is eroding. Sound familiar? At one time such a description did not include the United States. It used to be them, those other countries, but not the United States. But what has become clear is how much the United States has lost its exceptionalism and become just another advanced if not aging democracy in serious need of structural reforms. Continue Reading

NAFTA and US farmers—20 years later

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One of the clearest stories from the NAFTA experience has been the devastation wreaked on the Mexican countryside by dramatic increases in imports of cheap U.S. corn. But while Mexican farmers, especially small-scale farmers, undoubtedly lost from the deal, that doesn’t mean that U.S. farmers have won. Prices for agricultural goods have been on a roller coaster of extreme price volatility caused by unfair agriculture policies, recklessly unregulated speculation on commodity markets, and increasing droughts and other climate chaos. Each time prices took their terrifying ride back down, more small- and medium-scale farmers were forced into bankruptcy while concentration of land ownership, and agricultural production, grew. Continue Reading

The struggle for transparency in the U.S.-EU trade deal

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IATP is a member of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), a U.S.-European network of about 80 nongovernmental organizations, founded in 1999 on the premise that public policy will be improved by a frank discussion of policy documents disclosed to NGOs, just as they are to corporate lobbyists. TACD meets with U.S. and European Union officials yearly, alternating between Washington, D.C. and Brussels, Belgium, to discuss TACD resolutions. This year’s annual meeting focused on regulatory issues in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations between the U.S. and the European Union, formally launched in June. Continue Reading