The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
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Worldwide the strategy for becoming more competitive in the global economy is to lower wages for an export economy. The problem that has arisen is that almost every country has done the same thing. Heiner Flassbeck is Director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He has just released UNCTAD's 2012 annual report. It is essentially a report about inequality. It's not just that inequality is unfair --...
Comedian, Ruby Wax knows knows depression well. Throughout the '80s and '90s, during a flourishing career as a brash comedian and interviewer in the UK, it trotted at her heels, even while she was interviewing the Duchess of York and sorting through Imelda Marcos' shoes. Diseases of the body garner sympathy, but the same can't be said for diseases of the brain - why is that? With dazzling energy and humor, Wax, diagnosed a decade ago with clinical depression, urges us to put an end to the...
It was the toughest electoral challenge Hugo Chavez has faced since he came to power 14 years ago. But the opposition simply could not overcome his enormous popularity. Voters re-elected Chavez by a 10 per cent margin on Sunday. And it was a historic turnout with more than 80 per cent of the country's 19 million registered voters coming out to vote. Its his Bolivarian revolution that won him the support of millions. Al Jazeera's Inside Story speaks to a panel of experts about the meaning of...
Homophobia is not uncommon in South Africa and those most affected by LGBT hate crimes tend to be black South Africans. At this past weekend’s Joburg Gay Parade, a group of predominantly black feminist LGBT activists demanded one minute of silence to honour and mourn those who have been killed because of their sexual orientation and gender expression. But instead of showing solidarity with their cause, organizers of Joburg’s Gay Parade assaulted these activists.
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The world's population is maturing at an unprecedented rate. While developed countries like Japan have long had aging populations, today the aging phenomenon is happening much faster in developing countries -- and few have social protection schemes.
The United Nations (UN) is calling for governments to take action to face this new demographic reality. It recommends policy changes to address caring for the aged as well as policies to support older people to remain active as contributing...
Peer reviewed literature in the medical field is misleading cautions Ben Goldacre, a doctor, who argues that when it comes to drug tests, "positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine." In other words, when a new drug gets tested, all the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world to see - except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go...
